County buildings hold place in history

County home to 61 properties on national list

Posted: Sunday, December 28, 2008

By Tim Hrenchir

The most impressive feature of St. Joseph's Catholic Church is its "two identical steeples towering over all the neighborhood buildings and trees," said the nomination submitted in 1970 to get it onto the National Register of Historic Places.

The red structure at 235 S.W. Van Buren is an "outstanding Kansas example of a large 19th century brick church building," according to the nomination turned in by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas.

St. Joseph's Church was named to the national register in February 1971, meaning it has been on that list the longest of all of the register's 61 places in Shawnee County.

Eleven other properties in this county are on the State Register of Historic Places but not on the national list, according to the Web site of the Kansas State Historical Society.

Sarah Martin, national register coordinator for the historical society, said properties on the national and state registers are eligible for incentives that include tax credits and government grants that can be used to preserve or rehabilitate them.

Martin said inclusion on the registers also ensures that the state historic preservation office will have a voice in whether the properties may be altered or demolished, though units of local government have the final say.

The national register is the official list of the nation's places worthy of historic preservation, according to its Web site at www.nps.gov/history/nr/about.htm.

The register was authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. It is administered by the National Park Service, which is part of the Department of the Interior.

More than 80,000 properties are listed on the national register, representing 1.4 million individual resources that include buildings, bridges and neighborhoods.

Many of those listings name areas as "historic districts" that contain numerous interconnected properties that have historical value, Martin said.

She said naming all buildings in an area to the register is a good way to streamline the process when they might all be eligible for the list. In Shawnee County, the national register lists four different historic districts.

Most other Shawnee County sites on the national and state registers are buildings, though Shawnee County properties on the lists include five bridges, two farms, an agricultural field, an archeological site and the mausoleum row at Topeka Cemetery.

To be eligible for the national and state registers, structures generally must be more than 50 years old, Martin said. She said the people who decide what places to put on the registers look at whether they have any documented historical or architectural significance, how they have changed over time, and whether they have maintained their architectural integrity.

"A building doesn't have to be locked in time, but we do like to see whether it resembles what it did 50 or 100 years ago," Martin said.

Anyone wishing to nominate a property must fill out a preliminary site information questionnaire, which can be found online at www.kshs.org/resource/psiq.htm. If state officials determine a building is eligible, applicants will be mailed a more in-depth nomination form to fill out.

Martin said the latter form is reviewed by staff members at the state preservation office before being forwarded to the Kansas Historic Site Board of Review, a governor-appointed body of volunteer professionals that meets four times a year.

If that board approves a nomination, Martin said, the property involved becomes part of the state register and it generally forwards the nomination to officials who decide whether to put it on the national register. Martin said 1,126 Kansas places are listed on both the state and national registers.

She said 140 other Kansas properties are listed only on the state register. Martin suggested that in most of those cases, the properties meet requirements for the state register but not for the national register, for which some criteria are different.

Martin also said some properties listed only on the state register haven't yet been considered for the national register. Those include the last two Shawnee County sites added to the state register last month: Hopkins House at 6033 S.E. US-40 highway and the J.A. Shoemaker House at 1434 S.W. Plass Ave.